The future of banking is digital, says Brett King, the founder of Moven, a "downloadable bank" that gives customers real-time updates on spending partners.

In an exclusive interview with ET's Anirban Sen, he talks about Moven's plans and says HSBC will be the first global victim of the technological disruption. Edited excerpts:

How did the concept of Moven come about?

The first book I launched in 2010 was called `Bank 2.0'. It became a best seller in a dozen languages. I was on the book tour in the US in LA at a breakfast where I met these VCs and film-makers. And they asked me: What does the future bank account look like?

So, I described it to them - you download it on your phone and all that. And they said, but banks aren't going to do that.

So, in that book launch, the penny dropped and that afternoon I went back and registered the domain name for Moven. That was in August 2010. Essentially, the premise behind Moven was very simple - when a millennial opens a bank account, they aren't going to a branch and sign a piece of paper. They'll download it on the phone.

What do you think the future of banking will look like?

In 2008-09, we saw branches max out. 2015 was the year in the developed world when we saw the fastest ever decline in branch activity historically. That's only going to speed up from this point forward. What we've also seen is that we have now got hard numbers that show millennials don't engage in branches, particularly in markets like the US and UK.

Are we looking at a future where branches will cease to exist?

You'll still have some legacy customers who like to come to the banks. But the question will be: Is there enough activity from those legacy customers to justify the economics of the branch? Probably not at the current scale. So, you'll have smaller branches, smaller number of branches - I don't think branches will disappear entirely.

Do you think traditional banks can cope with the tech disruptions taking place in the world of financial services?

There are maybe a dozen banks around the world that can cope with this and embrace it culturally as a bank. But there are not heaps. The rest are really struggling with this...I've said this before in the press and I'll say it again, I think HSBC will be the first global victim of digital. And I think their retail bank will fail because they still aren't committed to digital... Deutsche Bank is another one that is in trouble.

What has been Moven's progress so far?

We've raised $24 million today. In the US, we're now working on some really interesting distribution partnerships.

We're partnering with the Freelancers Union - there are about 350,000 members there. We've partnered with Common Bond and Payoff and you'll soon hear about a lending partnership. We're partnering with other fin-tech organisations to create this. It's a competitive ecosystem for banking.

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